With development and popularization of smartphones, data traffic of mobile communications is steadily on the rise. Particularly, as people increasingly use applications, such as MICROBLOG, WECHAT, FACEBOOK, and TWITTER, it becomes increasingly hard for conventional cellular communications to meet ever-increasing communication traffic required by people. According to statistics, in global mobile communications, approximately 70% data traffic is generated indoors. This shows that most broadband data traffic of people, such as that for video services, online games, MICROBLOG browsing, and WECHAT, is generated in indoor environments. Therefore, it is particularly important to improve indoor signal coverage and indoor user experience for an indoor subscriber. In recent years, small cells have drawn wide attention in the communications industry. A small cell is a small-sized low-power base station, and can provide, based on existing third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) wireless standard protocols, wireless communications services to mobile terminals. Small cells are mainly deployed in public places such as shopping malls, offices and coffee shops, or inside homes. The small cell can make up for an indoor coverage shortage of a macro cell, and avoid difficulties in site selection for the macro cell. In addition, compared with the macro cell, the small cell can perform transmission at lower power, and therefore, the small cell is more environmentally friendly.
In other approaches, a small cell acts as a small-sized base station with low power consumption to provide communications services to mobile subscribers. As shown in FIG. 1, the small cell is connected to a Mobility Management Entity (MME)/Serving Gateway (SGW) using a small cell gateway, to connect to a core network. In addition, the small cell provides wireless communications services to terminals within a coverage area of the small cell using an air interface Uu. An interface S1 exists between a macro cell and the MME/SGW, and an interface X2 exists between macro cells. A macro cell is connected to the core network using the MME/SGW, and provides wireless communications services to terminals within a coverage area of the macro cell using an air interface Uu. Generally, information about a small-cell subscriber is stored in a Home Subscriber Server (HSS) or a Home Location Register (HLR), and the small-cell subscriber is managed using the HSS or the HLR. An interface S6a exists between the HSS or the HLR and the MME/SGW.
Small cells are generally deployed indoors, especially inside homes, but an HSS or an HLR is generally deployed by an operator. A small cell deployed inside a home is generally a private device of the home. Therefore, if an HSS or an HLR of an operator is used to manage a subscriber, great inconvenience is to result.